HTML5 Anonymous Bitcoin Poker
bearcoinpoker.com
bearcoinpoker.com
What? How do you justify that conclusion? That seems at odds with most of the history of gambling.
You make the most money if you appear trustworthy but aren't.
The newer a poker site is, the more likely it is to be shady, simply because it hasn't had anecdotal reports of it not being shady from actual players.
So, no. Wise decision, at least if you're Stateside. Government wants to preserve its monopoly on gambling.
The Ultimate Bet / Absolute scandal involved super-user accounts being used to reveal hole-cards of opponents and that most certainly was cheating.
The end result is that room went down in infamy and most of the people associated with it at the highest levels are looked down upon in the poker community.
On the other hand, Poker Stars ended up picking up the tab for Full Tilt, which is now a fairly trustworthy room thanks to Poker Stars' management.
I'm not sure if losing your customers coins is such a great business model.
There are a few things you could potentially do to make it not worth their time. The first is to take money before assigning a table, and then randomly assigning the person. The second is to have the house take such a large cut that even with collusion it's not profitable.
You still have to worry about Sybil attacks. It's one thing for me and my 3 friends to play poker together and try to land at the same table. It's another for me and my 1000 bots at different IP addresses (bots who will, of course, play computationally perfect games and collude any time they are at the same table) to try and beat the odds.
Even in the far fetched scenario where you place participants in Faraday cages, they can still communicate by timing bets, changing amounts, etc.
And you can be certain that none of that is happening in this example and I'd never play there -- unless I wanted to collude with friends.
As others have mentioned, proxies and out of band communication make it nearly impossible to really detect.
That said, detecting blatant or clueless collusion is fairly simple, as things like chip dumping and soft-playing can become fairly obvious just by observing play.
There are some challenges though, like multi account cheating, and bot players.
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2015/02/seals-with-clubs-chair...
The truth is, Micon was the "chairman", but the actual operations and such all took place out of country.
Crypto currency gambling is legal in the United States so long as there is no USD involved because crypto currencies are akin to stocks. You don't pay capital gains until you convert stocks into USD or other fiat currencies.
The implication is that somehow Micon may have been turning BTC from seals into USD and not giving a cut to the Nevada Gaming Commission.
Here's what it says:
(4) Financial transaction provider.— The term “financial transaction provider” means a creditor, credit card issuer, financial institution, operator of a terminal at which an electronic fund transfer may be initiated, money transmitting business, or international, national, regional, or local payment network utilized to effect a credit transaction, electronic fund transfer, stored value product transaction, or money transmitting service, or a participant in such network, or other participant in a designated payment system.
No person engaged in the business of betting or wagering may knowingly accept, in connection with the participation of another person in unlawful Internet gambling—
(1) credit, or the proceeds of credit, extended to or on behalf of such other person (including credit extended through the use of a credit card);
(2) an electronic fund transfer, or funds transmitted by or through a money transmitting business, or the proceeds of an electronic fund transfer or money transmitting service, from or on behalf of such other person;
(3) any check, draft, or similar instrument which is drawn by or on behalf of such other person and is drawn on or payable at or through any financial institution; or
(4) the proceeds of any other form of financial transaction, as the Secretary and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System may jointly prescribe by regulation, which involves a financial institution as a payor or financial intermediary on behalf of or for the benefit of such other person.
Crypto coins are stocks, not money, according to the IRS. There are no written checks for crypto currency. There is no financial institution involved in the transmission of crypto currency.
How are they preventing underage gambling if the site is completely anonymous?
The anti-gambling/anti-poker laws from "Black Friday" in 2011 actually have to do with banking and USD.
This is why there are actually several US-facing card rooms operating out of country semi-legally - they do not do banking in the US, so they are not afoul of laws in most states. I believe New York is a notable exception along with a few other states which sites like Bovada will not accept US users from.
any idea if there's a way i could play on any of these sites in this manner ?
On the other hand, all of them have low volume of users, so you may not find a game immediately on any of them.
...for tax purposes by the IRS. That's completely separate from its treatment in regard to other things, like financial services (e.g., money transmitter) regulation, and potentially gambling regulation.
It involves a clever trick for keeping hole cards and the deck initially secret, despite the fact that everything in the blockchain is public.